me-ri ku-ri-su-ma-su to all

Merry Christmas from Japan.

 

Erin and I are hopping on a night bus to Tokyo 15 minutes after I get out of work, and from there we`ll be hopping around the country for a week, so it`s not looking like I`m going to be able to make Christmas phone calls like I`d hoped. So I just wanted to drop a quick note to everyone and let you know that we`re thinking about you all and miss you all somethin terrible, especially on this day.

 

As I write this Santa is making the rounds in North America finally. He was here about twelve hours ago but he didn`t leave much for anyone from what I can gather. Something about his sleigh being full of stuff for the Americans.

 

I, on the other hand, am, for the first time, ringing in a bright and cheery Christmas morning here in my office at school. In fact, I celebrated Christmas this morning by giving out the gift of As on about 25 essays I needed to finish grading before the break. I felt rather cheery about that.

 

That`s not to say that there`s been no Christmas celebration in Japan. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Japanese do Christmas like they do so many Western traditions that have taken hold throughout the country: on Speed. As early as mid-October shelves at the local Mr. Max (think Wal-Mart with udon and a cuter pet store) started filling up with what I guessed were the Christmas decorations that Chinese companies couldn`t sell to America last year (the stuff that even the people with blow up Snow Globes in their yards think of as tacky). The rule of thumb seems to be that if it doesn`t somehow max out all of the five senses, it`s not good enough for Christmas.

 

After weeks of anticipation we finally got to see all of these Christmas decorations in their full glory on Wednesday night when we attended a "choir concert" that one of Erin`s students was singing in. We forgot our camera, and that will go down as the single greatest regret in my entire life because it`s never been more true that there simply are NO words. I mean I could tell you that at one point, at this Christmas choir concert, a Jimi Hendrix cover was sandwiched between two Eric Clapton songs, played by a local band named 2theMax, while a pirate clown with green dreads danced with a cross dressing chubby kid in a red halter top, both of whom seemed to be part of clown troupe led by the night`s MC/photographer who was wearing a brown dog mask. I could tell you that, but would it really help you understand the experience of Christmas in Japan? No.

 

I will tell you, however, that I think December 23 will go down as the day in this adventure where my feelings for Japan finally started to resemble less of a confused, timid fear and moreso a deep abiding appreciation for strangeness.

 

Well, I`m off to try and make some final preparations. We`re meeting family in Tokyo in 24 hours! That, I think, will probably never be a true sentence again in my life. From there it`s on to Mt. Fuji, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, and, the highlight of every tourist`s Japanese adventure, Yanai, Yamaguchi, Japan.

 

Much love everyone! Me-ri-ku-ri-su-ma-su!

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/

jyu-ichi-gatsu

That`s Japanese for November! Though now it's already jyu-ni-gatsu...

 

I have two drafts for entries from this month that will have to wait. I just haven`t found the opportunity to fully hash either one of them out up to this point. You see, I`ve had quite a full plate for this past week, constantly bouncing back and forth between studying the slight variations in shades of matte gray that covers my desk and every once in a while standing up to walk around the teacher`s room frantically, so that everyone gets the impression that I`m equally as stressed out about this week as them. That`s what I feel the need to write about right now.

 

So it`s testing week for high schoolers here in Yamaguchi-ken. You can tell it`s testing week because the droves of kids marching from the train station to school are making the morning commutes from automatic-muscle-memory, their eyes and minds buried in the books relevant to that day`s test subjects. What this means for teachers is that regular classes are cancelled in favor of half day test-o-thons where everyone runs around looking really stressed for the first half and then for the other half of the day they bury themselves in these monstrous stacks of papers and use only small, red pens to dig themselves out. It takes hours and looks terribly tramautizing for everyone. Anyway, as usual, I`m not completely clear about what exactly is going on around me from moment to moment. But, as usual, I know that it`s important and everyone is really worked up about it.

 

What testing week means for me, though, is absolutely n-o-t-h-i-n-g.

 

I`ve been through a week like this before. In fact, during my first month here there was a testing week, but I only vaguely remember it. Obviously, during my first few weeks here there was a lot going on and paying attention to variations in my workday somehow managed to fall through the cracks.

 

This time, however, I saw testing week coming. I didn`t know what to make of it, but as I watched that big, blank, empty page on my weekly planner move closer and closer I felt something akin to the feeling you get when you jump out of an airplane and you don't notice you've left behind your parachute until you're close enough to the ground to realize that it's really going to hurt when you hit it.

 

So I had the weekend and Thanksgiving came and went (more about that later). Then, like always, I sat down at my desk on Monday, 8:10AM, casually pushed the power button on my computer and pull out my weekly planner while it loads... I open the planner... Nothing but blankness stares back at me...blankly. And I stare blankly back at the blankness, and it stares back at me. And... Hmmmmmm... The wheels started turning. Nothing to do this week. Nothing to do... Hmmmm... Maybe I`ll just get online here and check the news... (10 minutes later) Maybe I`ll just get online here and check the news again... (repeat, for eight hours, then repeat again, this time for three days). Truly, I don`t mean to oversell it when I put it this way, I don`t think my time has ever felt so entirely meaningless in all of my life. Even compared to that summer after freshman year where my job was literally sweeping the dust off of the lumberyard parking lot (which, in retrospect, actually was a good job).

 

Gradually, excruciatingly, the week passed in shades of gray: I`d awake in the gray light of the morning and put on my grayest suit, eat a gray breakfast, put on my gray shoes and sit on my gray bike seat, pedaling through gray air on my way to gray building where I`d put my gray jacket in a gray locker and go sit in my gray chair at my gray desk and tap away mindlessly at gray computer keys until gray matter dripped out of my ears and piled up on my desk in front of me, where no one noticed it because it was gray on a gray background. I became depressed.

 

If you know me, you could've seen this coming. You would know that I shamefully SUCK at having nothing to do. Unfortunately, I don't know me as well as you, so I didn't, and it SUCKED.

 

So, it's likely that you are by now wondering why I decided to make my November update about the most boring, meaningless week I've ever experienced. If you're not wondering, I'll help you: this was the month of Thanksgiving and of working on the farm at my agricultural school and of school festivals and trips to Hiroshima! Are you wondering yet? Because you need to be wondering for me to need to write the next part.

 

OK. I'm writing about this stupidly mundane experience because 1) it feels like much needed therapy to write about it because last week was seriously very tramautizing in the degree of pointlessness I experienced as time slowly ticked by and 2) it really says a lot about what I'm doing here in Japan and I think it might have been somewhat of a pivotal week for me in my time here. I'll say a couple of things about the latter and hopefully the first one will continue to take care of itself.

 

I came to Japan mostly for the job. Yes, I wanted to travel, but I could travel anywhere and (truth be told) hold no deep, abiding interest in the nation of Japan specifically beyond the fact that it is not the United States. Erin and I chose Japan, then, primarily because of the sweet career opportunity that the JET program represents. It's competitive, it pays well, and it's a huge, challenging adventure; a perfect fit for a freshly minted college graduate, right? Definitely right. Except there is no JET Program in any meaningful sense. To ask "what's it like to work for the JET program?" is in some ways similar to asking what it's like to work for a temp. placement agency. The only honest answer is "well, it really depends on a LOT of factors." That's because the JET program is only little more than the placement agency that gets you a job with a local school district or board of education. What your job is, then, depends almost entirely on what specific school or schools you end up in. Sometimes it is the "adventure in inter-cultural exchange" advertised on the JET program webpage, and sometimes it's...different than that.

 

When I got here, and for the first months I was living and working here, I definitely expected the "JET program" to be the adventure of a lifetime as, one could argue, it is advertised. I expected it to be like any job you get in that adventure: Congratulations, you're hired, here's your placement, here's what we expect, this is what your job is, you're not quite meeting our expectations, could you please do a little more of this and a little less of that, you're doing this really well, etc, etc, etc. Like any job, only with more amazing, awe-inspiring, life-changing inter-cultural learning and exchange happening. But the JET program isn't a job, it's a placement agency and what your job is is an entirely different question. My job, it turns out, is to show up for class on time, speak English when asked, and generally be foreign. The JET program does present the opportunity for adventure, of course, but this job is most definitely not the adventure...

 

To put it another way, what I finally learned in an agonizing fashion this week is that my job is basically entirely up to me. My school really doesn't expect anything of me besides being present during the work day and going to class when one is scheduled. That means that I have to truly come up with my own objectives and find ways to spend my own time if I want to take anything away from this opportunity. That was not my understanding of any of the Japanese way of doing things, Japanese schools, Japanese work-places, etc. In fact, it was so not what I expected that it really has taken me until this week to learn that what I do in this job is up to me.

 

Friday afternoon, I finally took all of this to heart and the day flew by as I started a craft project creating an English message center where I'll post weekly or monthly discussion questions and the kids can either post public responses or write personal messages to me. I'm really excited about it, and no one assigned it to me and no one ever would because no one has any idea what my job is supposed to be. It's supposed to be whatever I make it be. I`ve heard a big, strange sounding, conjunction of a word used to describe situations like this before. Supposedly, it`s valued by employers and most folks in general. I think it`s called being "self-directed." Hm.

 

Anyway, that`s what I learned this week.

 

Also, life is generally good and mundane. I`m still way up in the air about an actual career choice, and for some reason that seems to have been weighing down on me a lot lately. I can`t stop thinking about what I should be doing with my life after the JET program. Any tips will be greatly appreciated.

 

I`ve had the chance to milk a cow, tend to greenhouse tomatoes, plant flowers, feed a calf, and generally enjoy some other farm-related activities at my agricultural school. That`s definitely my favorite school. Erin and I got the chance to experience three different typs of Japanese festivals in one day on a day off this month. There will be more to say about that later.

 

And, Thanksgiving was awesome, both of them. For one we went over to another ALTs house and for the other we had this fusion-Japan-American Thanksgiving at the house of a retired Marine and his Japanese wife. Details to follow soon!

 

Keep keeping in touch! Love you guys!

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/

JAPAN!?

At long last, fall has blown into Yamaguchi-ken with a strong, swift sigh of relief. Thinking about it, it`s funny how in our time here the outside weather situation has become so clearly analogous with our ``inside situations.`` I think back, relucantly, to those stifling, steamy, unbearable few days after we had first arrived, when the heat and humidity pushed down on us relentlessly and once basic situations became impossibly complicated, and all we could manage to think about was how we were going to escape it all. It was hard to move at all during those days, much less 'experience Japan.' Then the heat would break occasionally and we`d be a little bit more comfortable making our way to the grocery store or the ATM, and we`d see glimpses of a life we would be able to bare. Then there were the inevitable storms, even a typhoon or two that barely missed us, that we didn`t fully understand but which left us cowering in our rooms, windows once again closed tight, thinking about the possibility for escape. Sometime in the middle of last month, I think, we started waking up in the mornings and there'd be this breeze blowing in through our windows that actually had a chill to it. We'd have to close up all the windows and began pulling our space heaters out of the closet. We had no idea what this sudden chill meant, but we were enjoying it.

It's turned out, and thank God for it, that fall here is just beautiful. Suddenly, we're walking around outside in relative comfort, taking newly discovered shortcuts to the grocery store, or choosing the long way because we felt like it and not because we were lost, happily choosing from a number of places where we wanted to go out to eat, even getting lost on purpose in our now quaint feeling little town. As I write there's one of those misty, Japanese rains falling outside my window, but it's no longer that sludge that Erin and I pushed our way through on our first night here. Now it's a familiar, cooling comfort, a good reason to finally stay in for an evening and appreciate our cozy little home. It's easy to forget sometimes, but the seasons will always change, wont they?

Of course, all of this slowing down and enjoying has left us with a bit more time on our hands to spend wondering why in the hell we decided to go through all of this in the first place. Let me be clear: we're not at home here. We enjoy ourselves in spite of the fact that we miss everyone all the time, we miss everything familiar, and we have our days where all we want is to be stuck in traffic on some familiar Indiana interestate before the sun comes up on our way to a job that's driving us crazy in America. So why are we here?

Japan was always just sort of the next thing we were going to go for, ever since we first had a friend who did the program up her graduation, while we were sophmores. We chose philosophy and theology majors without any career tracks in mind, basically to keep ourselves free to decide later on, and, it turns out, the JET program is somehow the most logical next step on the career path for a philosophy/theology major. In other words, hey, it's a job... Then there's the passion for travel and experiencing different cultures. Then there's the simple fact that there didn't seem to be anything better to do. Why not have the adventure of a lifetime? As so many of you have told me, "now's the time..."

All of this was good and fine throughout college. Adventure, exploration, etc. etc. Strangely, something started happening for Erin and I about January of last year. We started having thoughts of a family, of the importance of community, and we started talking about the meaningful types of adventure that can be had just by getting to know yourself and where you already stand more deeply. This was the beginning of a somewhat gradual shift in the way each of us thought about and valued ourselves and the world we live in. We were starting to take place and relationships far more seriously than we ever had before. We even started talking about farming as a possible expression of this thinking about life, and have talked about it only more seriously ever since.This is something I've since given quite a bit of thought, still not so much as it's due, and I hope to write about it at length another time. I'm only speculating, but I think this might be what some people are referring to when they sometimes talk about "growing up." Like I said, this change was ever so gradual and ever so quiet, but it was also quite obvious and many of you have probably heard one of us speak or write about it from time to time.

Fortunately or unfortunately, there's no way to tell which, this subtle, gradual change was happening right in the middle of the combination whirlwind/earthquake/typhoon that we usually just call life, and so we didn't really get much of a chance to pay it a whole lot of attention. In other words, this stuff started to come up for us right about the time we found out we were going to get interviews for the JET program... The conversation maybe went something like this: (last January) "Hey, Erin." "Yeah Isaac?" "I've been thinking about the value of community and deep pers...WHOAH HOLY CRAP JAPAN!? WHOAH!?? WHAT THE CRAP WE COULD GO TO FRICKING JAPAN OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE IT WE'RE GOING TO INTERVIEW TO LIVE IN JAPAN WITH THE JET PROGRAM!! WHOOOOAAAAHHHH!!!!" (eight months later, and in Japan...) "...onal reflection and really considering what is important in my life. I think maybe we should think about buying some land and... Wait a minute..."

So, that's something about how we ended up here and what we're doing (and not doing) in Japan. That's not to say, obviously, that our time in Japan is a waste. How could it be? It's just to say that, as will happen from time to time in life, our priorities didn't quite sync up naturally with our realities. We're making the most of it here, but all of this I think has only made it all the more difficult to adjust to life in Japan, right when we're starting to realize what it is that we want most out of our life in general... It has also, however, made our transition here all the more valuable. It's made us really scrutinize those values and think about what they truly mean and where they are coming from. Our core values are definitely something we take for granted living in the relative comfort of our native society. If you value something and you're in your own society, you go out and get it, or you don't. If you value something and you're in an entirely new and foreign society, you're a little bit stuck both ways... We can't just go help out a friend on a farm here, we can't just dig up a garden, we can't just sign up for crafts classes at the local civic center for a lot of reasons which are difficult to understand until you run straight into them. So we've had to get creative. We have to ask, what do these values mean to us and why do we hold them? Are they too important to wait? If so, how can we express them ASAP? Questions like these can only ever be a good thing. And we're definitely learning more about ourselves and our values than we've ever cared to before...

Long story just a little bit longer, as a result of this questioning, we've begun to find ways to live out our values in our life here in Japan. Erin, like always, is chipping away writing that awesome story that will someday be a an awesome book. She's also really building up "Erin's English Conversation School" and has six students this week, with more on the way. It seems like being self-employed is hella tight. I've befriended a gardening instructor at one of my agricultural high schools who pushes his high-school level English to very max to help me get involved with the fully functioning farm at the school. Tomorrow, he says, I will be onionman! Last week I was flowerman. And, finally, one of Erin's students RUNS A FRICKING FARM with her husband THAT TAKES INTERNS, and they both speak English! She's going to ask this week about how we can get out there as much as possible and help them out to learn from them...

So that's something like what's been going on here recently.

Thanks for listening! We'll keep you posted!

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/
 

Pictures and Updates

Hey Everyone

New pictures from August are already up and updates will be coming soon! Check them out.



--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/
http://picasaweb.google.com/EEHoug

You Tube Videos Fixed

Hey Everyone. I finally was able to fix part 4 of the Adventures in Yanai. I think it should work now. Sorry it took so long to figure out. I obviously do not know what I am doing.

Peace

 

Erin

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/
http://picasaweb.google.com/EEHoug

Really?

How do we compete with this? This guy just does everything...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/business/global/12iht-speech.html

September-ish update

``Well, wuddaya know? We`ve done it. Two months in Japan...``

 

That`s how I began this entry two weeks ago when I intended to have it finished and sent out. In retrospect, it`s better that I didn`t get any further at that point because I think that the next lines would have gone something more like this:

 

``I waaaaaaaaana gooooo hoooooooooommmmmeee noowwwww!!! NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW! This is too hard and I don`t wanna do it! I`m hungry, I`m tired, I`m scared, and sad. I don`t wannnnaaaa. NononononononononononononNO! I want a cheeseburger and french fries and english speakers and food with spices and wide-open, flat, boring country-side and familiar faces and big, loud, obnoxious cars that pour out black exaust and run you off the road and rude people and crappy restaurants with bad service and cheap, crappy, Wal-Mart stuff and guns and freedom and....! I want it nooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww now now now now.``

 

Obviously, it`s a good thing I got too busy to write there for a while at the beginning of the month.

 

Once again, it`s been a roller-coaster of a time. I think at this point, though, I can safely say that it`s leveling out more toward the middle instead of the low-points. We`re finally, I think, finding a routine and things, slowly but surely, are feeling somewhat normal.

 

I think Erin covered most things from September in her entry (sweet road bikes, vacations, etc) so I`ll leave that be. It all seems like such a blur sometimes that I`m not even sure if I could tell you if last week I was on vacation in Kyoto or just getting off the plane (I`m pretty sure it was neither). I can`t believe it`s October! I do remember one time many weeks ago when Erin and I were sorting through all the stuff in our closet leftover from 17 years of ALTs living in our apartment. It was soooooooooo hot out at the time and we found a stash of space heaters and things and just packed them away without thinking about it. In the blink of an eye we have to dust them off and figure out how to use them... My sense of time feels soooo messed up...

 

We definitely had a few rough patches there around the turn of the month. One week, as the cool fall air was thinking about blowing in, we had about seven straight days of rain. And I ride my bike to work as far as 8 or 9 miles on different days. Needless to say, about Wednesday of that week might have been my low point in Japan...

 

The high points, though, are many and piling up faster than we can keep track of them. Erin has a few students signed up for some conversation lessons, which will begin this week. She`s going full swing in TaiChi, tea ceremony, kimono, and will begin cooking classes this week. We had Erin`s birthday party along with a friend of ours' party last Friday and had about 18 people there. Half of them were Japanese friends and half were ALTs. We`re really starting to form a community and, like I said, feel a little bit normal about life in Yanai...

 

I`m studying 25 new Japanese characters a day (I`m up to 450, or nearly 25% of the Japanese writing system!) Contrary to popular belief, I`ve actually found this studying to be hugely rewarding. First of all there`s the obvious benefit of getting around in the culture somewhat easier when you can read a few of the signs. But also, I think I`m learning that Japanese isn`t any more difficult to learn than any other language, it`s just soooo different from English. That`s been a good thing so far, because it`s kept everything interesting. It`s also really interesting to be learning Japanese while trying to teach English. I think that`s shown me that as complicated as Japanese is it can`t be any more difficult than English. I get so many obscure questions about English grammar and spelling everyday that really makes no sense to me whatsoever. English has got to be one of the most inconsistent means for communication ever devised...

 

Other than that, this has been an overall amazing time for some personal growth and self-reflection. My job isn`t exactly what you might call `time consuming` so I get to take about 30 minutes a day in the mornings to just sit and write my thoughts. That`s been very, very, immeasurably helpful for coping with the stresses. I sent out a couple slices of those thoughts in that IN blog, and I`m really grateful to have the time to sit and process through all of that stuff. I think I`d go crazy without it... I'm still sitting with all of that stuff and am so excited to see how it develops. Lately, these ideas of nothing and nothingness have kept popping up in terms of some Buddhist ideas that keep coming my way. I'm not sure how to study "Buddhist ideas" but I do think that, in general terms, one can safely say that Japanese/Buddhist/Zen/Eastern ways of engaging with and thinking about nothingness and being and non-being differ from those ways and ideas in my culture. More on that on some other boring, existential feeling Wednesday morning...

 

Now that things are settling down Erin and I have taken some more time to sit still and think about the direction we want our lives together to take. We`re pretty happy with the possibilities but it all still seems so up in the air. Things are really just starting to hum right along as we get into the swing of things, and we`re just now able to really think about how we can make the most of this next year in Japan for ourselves. From where I`m standing, I`m pretty sure it`s gonna be a good one and we'll see what happens from there. We made a pact about a week ago to stop all discussion about how long we will be in Japan until around December, when we will finally sit down and have a discussion about long term goals for our lives and how we will get there... It's tough to put that on the back-burner but life is like any great story...as tempting as it is to jump ahead you just have to wait and see.

 

I think that`s about all I`ve got to cover for now. Thanks to everyone for the care-packages (Mimi and Papa, Gramma and Papa, Kent and Karen, Jess and John, Daddio, Scott (the bag of Hoosier dirt is hanging on the wall next to me as I write this)). It`s funny that so far they`ve been at perfect intervals so that when we run out of something another package arrives in a few days to stock us up again. That`s been really nice.

 

I`m sorry this has been all over the place but I didn`t really have any time to plan it out so I just sort of typed stuff out as I thought of it this time. Hopefully, the next entry will be a bit more organized.

 

Please, everyone, keep writing responses and let us know what`s going on in your worlds. We`re doing our best to keep in touch!!!

 

Much, much, much love! We miss you and can`t wait to see you again!

 

 

 

Isaac

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/

A Blog Entry!

Hello Again Everyone. Sorry it has been so long since we last posted about our travels. It's getting busy I guess? First of all we finally got our movie from early September up on youtube.com! Go to youtube.com and search for "Adventures in Yanai Part 1" or "Erin Isaac Yanai Adventures" there should be 5 parts, therefore there are 5 videos. It's kinda cheesy but we had fun making it. Check it out!

Well, life if Japan is still weird but we are adjusting. We are beginning to really enjoy ourselves here now, with less of s shock to the culture and less worry in general. I'm sure Isaac will give you the scoop on his classes when he writes so I will leave that up to him. I on the other hand am still trying to get it together with work and filling my time.

Lately, I have been writing. Which has been filling a huge part of my soul. It's nice. Since I have been feeling this way I have been looking into writing programs for when I get home. I am even working on some writing pieces right now. So at the very least this experience has pushed me in the direction of writing, which is helpful. Isaac is thinking about teaching when we get back so at least one of us will be employable while I continue to "feel" it out. :o)

Money is proving to be a little bit more tight that we anticipated so I am trying to get a business of sorts together for teaching English Conversation. People are interested and I would love to teach them. So far so good. We shall see how it goes! I'll keep you updated.

In the meantime, other than working on making a buck and writing my little heart out I am making friends! I am in three hobby clubs, all of which I have been to at least 2 meetings for. I am in Japanese Kimono, Tai-Chi, and Japanese Tea Ceremony. All of them are so different and have their own personalities. My Kimono class is a bunch of women of all ages who have been sweet and fun to get to know. My teacher is so cute- about 65 and always wears her kimono to class. I gather from the constant laughter at her remarks that she is rather funny. Either that or she's making fun of me.....either way we laugh a lot even if it is at my expense. She's very kind to me and has given me her business card, which in Japan means A LOT! So that's good!

Tea Ceremony is a private lesson a 30 minute walk from my house in a neighborhood on the hillside. The teacher is awesome. Doesn't speak a lick of English. And I don't speak any Japanese, so it's interesting. But a lot of fun and very interesting. The class was arranged by a woman from my Tai Chi class who has taken it upon herself to get me all the things I need for Tea Ceremony- this is a big deal because these items are very very expensive. A fan, a red cloth, and some other things that I have no idea what they are for.....hehe. I will learn and then I can tell you. She's a very sweet lady and has told me, via my translator friend Hatsue, that she gets very lonely in her house since her husband died and would like me to come and have dinner with her. I think I will too. Her house is the first Japanese house I have been to. And I am looking forward to spending more time with her.

Lastly, there's Tai Chi. Let me tell you, it is never a dull moment. I think this class has been together for at least 2-3 years, some of them have even been in attendance for 10 years. They are a hoot. Always joking and laughing. Flirting with the teacher, the teacher flirting with the students. Keep in mind everyone in this class is 60 or older, I am by far the youngest and I feel like I have become something of a mascot for them. And according to my dear friend and constant translator, Hatsue, who I mentioned before, the teacher jokes about adoring me with the rest of the class. I enjoy it even if I don't know what the hell they are saying....all the time....

We have a Tai Chi performance coming up in a week. I am very nervous and excited about it! They are so good and I am still learning. I also stick out like a sore thumb so if I mess up....it's noticeable. I will let you know how it goes and I am sure we will have some good pictures too.

In the pictures you will notice Isaac and I went around on our bikes to LOTS of places......those places including the beach and awesome temples are all right here in our town. We had no idea but now we do....Yanai has proven to be an awesome awesome town!

Our big news is that Isaac and I went on an awesome trip with our good friend Chris Blackstock who studied abroad with us in Istanbul. He's been living here 2 years now and loves it. He is helping us learn to love it too......like I said the culture shock has been rough but our trip with Chris was very therapeutic.

We took a ferry from our town to the Island of Shikoku next door where we spent the day in Matsuyama. We saw the castle, walked all over, ate some awesome Indian food and had a great time. That night we got to our ferry port and hopped another ferry, this one overnight, to Osaka. We arrived to Osaka at 6am with a full day ahead of us before we met up with Chris that night. We walked all over the city with our backpacks on....ugh.....and ate good food, saw the crazy Japanese city life, and even went to the Osaka Human Rights Museum.

When we met up with Chris we all hung out and planned our next three days. We went the next day to Kyoto, which was charming old style Japanese and absolutely beautiful! We went to the northern part of the city, where we walked through some beautiful nature: a bamboo forest and along a big river cutting through the mountains. Then we took the romantic train through the mountains. It was awesome! All of this is in the pictures so please check it out. On the train Isaac and I found a beautiful Japanese baby that we wanted to take home with us......the cute babies here are doing nothing for our baby craze we have been going through lately. Really, the cuteness here is ridiculous. Just ridiculous.

That night we went back to Osaka where the three of us shamelessly searched for a pub serving a decent hamburger. Yes.....that;s what we wanted. Only God can judge us. On our search we found too other Geijin (foreigners) who were looking for a good pub. So they joined us! We didn't find a pub or burgers but we found good food that included french fries and decently priced drinks. The two people we hung out with are Americans and live in Tokyo teaching English. It was fun and cool to hang out with a group of people who spoke English.....again shameless. But also cool to talk with them because they have lived in Japan for over a year and have been living in Tokyo doing what Isaac, Chris, and even I am trying to do now.

The next day we went back to Kyoto where we toured some temples, walked on the philosopher's path and walked around the Geisha district. Which was also very very cool. We tried not to spend too much money so we did a lot of sitting, watching, talking and walking. It was relaxed. That night we went back to Osaka where we found yummy Belgian food and an English Pub. Haha. It was a fun last night. The three of us stayed up late talking and debating about life....we were all in theology and philosophy at Hanover together so...it was fun for us anyway.

On our last day we hit up Osaka all day. We found a Turkish restaurant this day which was AMAZING. They were real Turks selling REAL Turkish food that was Really Damn Good! I literally had tears in my eyes.....I'm seriously not joking either. Ask Isaac and Chris. Then we went to the Osaka aquarium which was so much fun! They have some really strange creatures int he water around here as you can probably imagine.....so it was fascinating to tour it all. After that we had time for one last stop at the Turkish restaurant before we all had to catch our trains heading in different directions. It was sad to say goodbye.....but we all live in Japan together so it wasn't that sad! :o)

Out trip home was easy and since then we have just been hanging out and living simple.

My birthday is coming up and I think I will be having a party with another ALT friend who lives in the town next to us. Her birthday is in a few days also so it should be fun. Other than that we have some fun plans for day trips with American Canadian and Japanese friends. That will all be for another post though so stayed tuned.

Talk to you soon and Take Care!

Hugs and Love

Erin

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/
http://picasaweb.google.com/EEHoug

New Pics

Hey Everyone

 

We have 2 new albums up online. We went around our town and went on a trip to Osaka and Kyoto with Chris Blackstock. Sorry ahead of time for all the ridiculous photos we indcluded in the albums. One of us thought they were funny and the other was too lazy to go through all of the photos and delete them. So there ya go. Our blog updates should be coming soon.

 

Enjoy!
--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/
http://picasaweb.google.com/EEHoug

IN again...

So, I didn`t think this warranted a mass mailing, but I was feeling that feeling again. The one that prompted me to wax philosophical the other day, and the result was the same this time.

So, I was feeling a lot of anxiety this morning. Erin says it`s the anxiety that comes along with living in another culture where everything is different, and I tend to agree with her. But I was riding my bike along to work and the feeling was just getting greater and greater. I pass students from my school on the way to work, them walking and me on my bike, and the feeling gets greater and greater. I keep thinking to myself about how I feel so afraid/anxious/worried on the inside and there`s no way for me to appropriately indicate that on the outside.

So I get to my desk at school and the work day starts. Of course, I realize that this feeling is coming, once again, from my sense of being cut off from everything around me, it is a sense of being alone.

I`m thinking, though, that I wouldn`t call it being `on the outside` though I still tend to think that has something to do with it. I`m starting to move beyond simple insides and outsides with the way I`m thinking about this/culture. I still think there is this fundamental desire or need or presupposition that we, as human beings, be `inside` of something. That which we are inside is what we typically refer to as our `outsides` (`I am inside my outsides` is manifest), though we delimit it physically in different ways. Some people think of their outsides as that which is on the other side of their skin, and some people think of it as all that which is physical about them, with that which is inside being their `soul, spirit, etc.`

Being in another culture, it`s not so much that I feel outside while everyone else is inside, as I wrote in my last entry, but that I have a different outside than everyone else around me... Additonally, this is not painful or anxiety inducing simply because they are different. Where the anxiety comes from is the experience of their insides and outsides being completely meaningless to me.

I want to try and ground this in my experience. What`s going on around me at this point, as I sit at my desk, is that people are going about their daily lives, like any office workers would do on a Monday morning in any first world country in the world. What`s cutting me off from that, though, is that none of it can have any meaning for me. Another way of saying it is that I don`t understand `why` so and so is going to the copy room. I know they go to make copies, but copies for what, about what, meaning what, what motivates them, who made that decision for them? I know they laugh, but about what, for what. `Why` is another way of asking the meaning. By meaning, I mean that something fits into my outsides, or that which I am in. When I ask why, I am asking how it fits into my outsides. In my office in Japan, I am surrounded by people for whom I can`t answer why, people who I can`t fit into my outsides, and so I am surrounded by mostly meaningless people.

In order to be something, my experience, it would seem, has to have meaning, or, it has to be a part of that which I am in.

The actions of those around me, these mundane daily tasks I`ve seen hundreds, thousands of times before, idle chit chat, making coffee, opening and closing windows, making copies, reading books, are meaningless because the insides of the people around me are meaningless. That is, the people around me, as insides, are nothing. Their insides are not a part of that which I am in. Though I can clearly see that there are insides there where there are people doing what people do, those insides are exist as nothing.

Language, then, must be that which makes other`s insides a part of my outside. Without understanding what people are saying, writing, hearing, and reading, their insides aren`t a part of that which I am in. Additionally, vice versa, my inside (this which is in) is not a part of that which they are in. Language, more symbols in my existential outside, gives their actions context and it gives me, however tennuous, a means of constructing their insides as a part of my outside, of giving them meaning, and of making them something.

I am nothing to them because my insides remain cut off from that which they are in, because I can`t bring my inside into their world of symbols, their outside, that which they are in. They can`t bring their inside into my world of symbols (language) so, though they are acting exactly as I would expect people to act, their actions are the result of nothing. Their actions, their insides, their world, their outsides, are all meaningless to me. They are a part of my outside but a part that doesn`t connect with my outside. This, obviously, brings me face to face with nothingness.

This nothing that exists evidently as a part of that which I am in bares a constant reminder of the nothing out of which I continually fashion that which I am in. That is where the anxiety I`ve been feeling lately comes from, from a nothing in that which I am in that I am constantly coming into contact with. I am constantly coming into contact with that Nothing, dark, lonely Nothing out of which nothing can emerge but within which all things exist.

IN

So...
I put my philosophy degree to work this afternoon. And I just have to write this out because I think it's important for me and may be interesting for some. But this is your warning: mind-numbing abstractions and made up words ahead. Turn back now if you're looking for funny stories! Please read on if you can help me reflect on this some more! If you're a busy professor and just want the philosophy, have a look at about the last two paragraphs.

OK. This afternoon at work, to kill some time, I started writing about the feeling I get when walking into the classroom on a daily basis. That is, I started reflecting on the state of being that I experience when entering the classroom. It's a pretty unique experience for me. Further, I think it's generally somewhat of a poignant, telling human experience. This all began because I was trying, as I often do, to 'put myself in the shoes' of the Japanese students that I'm working so closely with. The teachers reading this will know that understanding your students' perspective is crucial if you hope to make a connection with them, and connecting with students is crucial if you hope to effectively teach them things.

So I was thinking about this and I was wondering what it must be like for them to be sitting in class and have this foreigner walk in and start talking to them in English. And I realized, I really and truly have NO IDEA what that must be like. I can kind of imagine myself as a high school student in Spanish class and the possibility of this hired Spanish person walking in who is straight of the plane and ONLY speaks Spanish. That would've been interesting in high school. BUT, that doesn't really actually help me understand what that would be like for a JAPANESE person. That's because, as far as I can tell, being Japanese is something considerably different from being American. I can't explain that.

So I realize that thinking about this, at this point, will get me more or less nowhere. I will only make headway in this department by being here and working with them and being around them and slowly developing an empathetic relationship.

So I give up on that, and I start thinking about what it's like for ME walking into that classroom. I start to write about the anxiety, the fear, the sadness, that all sort of sit in the back of my existence as I smile and talk and laugh through class. I do REALLY enjoy these classes, but these background feelings are undeniable. They're there.

What is that feeling? What is that experience? I wonder to myself as I sit at my desk. And I realize that it's all about being an outsider. It's the feeling that you get when you're in a group and someone says something like, "Man, that apple tasted funny, you know!?" and the whole group falls out with laughter because there's something deeper to the statement that you don't have any grasp of. It's being on the outside of an inside joke, a feeling we all certainly know very well. It's that times 1000. You're the outsider on and inside LIFE, the outsider on an inside WAY OF BEING. It can be really, terribly isolating if you don't just ignore the feeling and get on with the business of teaching class.

But I was thinking about this feeling. About where that comes from. And I started to think about culture as forms of inside and outside. To really get to know the students, I have to get inside of their culture. So, I started to think about culture as inside and outside, and how we create cultures as ways of being inside. In a sense, then, culture comes from the human feeling of isolation. Culture is maybe our way of covering up that isolated sense we all have. Simply put, if you don't feel an overwhelming sense of your existential solitude, thank your culture.

This led me to realize that human beings, it seems, or at least me, cannot feel at ease unless we are inside of SOMETHING. This is true both spatially and symbolically. To be in something is to be whole. If we are not IN something, we are nothing. Think about it, no matter what happens, no matter where you are, you HAVE to be in something. Imagine yourself not inside of something... That is, imagine yourself in NOTHING. I guarantee you cannot truly do it without obliterating your sense of what it is to be you. If you're like me, you imagined yourself suspended in blackness. But blackness is something. You are IN 'total blackness.' To truly be IN nothing you become nothing. It's like the thought experiment people sometimes try where you wonder what 'the world' or existence would 'look like' if there were no 'you'. But, if there were no you, there would be NOTHING, because you are the one who organizes existence into things to be IN. What's really rough about that is everything that is would not 'disappear.' It would still exist, it would just exist as NOTHING. For there to be something, YOU have to be IN it.

To be you, you have to be contrasted with the something that YOU are IN. If you're not in your room, you're in your house, or you're in your neighborhood, or you're in your city, or you're in your country, or you're in your planet, or you're in this galaxy (which, interestingly, is about when it's no longer 'yours'). This is why space travel is so terrifying to many. I think less because we might die in space, but we can't imagine what we'd possibly be IN when we're in space. Though we call it space, we also know that it somehow IS a whole lot of NOTHING.

So, this being IN is, I am thinking, the source of our culture in two ways, one more talked about than the other. First, we create things to be in (symbolically and really) and, second, we create ways to understand what it is that we are in. The second one is how we usually think of culture. When I was in America, I thought that people in Japan lived in the same reality as me, they just created different ways of understanding what we were both in. When you actually come to a different culture, you realize, no matter how subliminally, that, though you are standing right next to them, you are in the same classroom, you have actually created DIFFERENT THINGS TO BE IN and you are both outside of eachother's INs. Not only do we create the ways that we understand what it is that we are in (which is the shared culture we always talk about), we CREATE THE VERY THINGS THAT WE ARE IN (which we don't talk about because it's our own task). That, I realized, is what the existentialists are talking about when they talk about how we ourselves and nothing else sustain our own existence necessarily. And what the post-modernists mean when they are talking about situatedness: they are talking about the things that we've created to be in.

The point, then, is that walking into a Japanese classroom helped to FINALLY understand postmodernism and Heidegger a little bit better.

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/

My Turn!

Hey Everyone! Konnichi-wa.

So, Isaac gave you the culture shock perspective so I am going to lighten to mood with some fun stories and adventures we have had. Forgive me for not reporting on everything we have done for that would take ages and I don't like to type that much. So far we are settling in, thank God because I wasn't sure at first how well this was going to go for us. As you may know I am currently without work and am thanks to Isaac living off of his hard earned cash. So to give myself some prupose and to help out in every way possible I have been cleaning this house from top to bottom, experimenting with cooking food, and working on some club activites in the community: namely Tai-Chi. To put it short, I have come to the Japan to play the role of 1950's house wife....? Well, here's hoping that something will come along and until then I am just trying to enjoy our new life here.

 

So far we have been able to go to the beach 3 times and we have been to Shimonoseki, Fukuoka and Oshima. Shimonoseki is the last big city in the Yamaguchi Prefecture. If you look on a map it sits right before the last large southern Island of Kyushu. Shimonoseki is a major port to and from S. Korea so there is a lot of Korean influence in this city. This city is also fairly large so it was my first experience of Japan city life. We went there with several other jets for a Fireworks festival!!!! It was so fun. We met a bunch of new people, made some friends as you will see in the pictures, and we got to see some awesome festival activites. You see August is the month of festivals, or "festival season" . Basically the Japanese pick a theme, i.e. floats, fish, water, and they dress up in their kimonos, eat squid on a stick, Octopus fried dough balls and a variety of things dipped in different flavored sugar and watch the biggest damn fireworks I have ever seen.

 

We did try the Octopus....not too bad actually. But the fireworks really were some of the biggest and most amazing I have ever seen. It was so funny too. First of all this particular festival was itself a fireworks festival where the city we were in was competing with the city across the water on the southern Island of Kyushu. So it was double the fireworks activity. The two cities were competing for the best fireworks display....they literally competed and someone won. Luckily for us, our side won. We still aren't sure what happens to the losing side, but we have heard it's something involving giant live fish and "swim for your lives". But those are just rumors.  

 

Next we went to Fukuoka which is on Kuyushu the last big southern island in Japan. It was a really big city and unfortunately we didn't actually see that much. We did see a temple which was my first time in a real Buddhist temple and we ate some really good noodles. I think the highlight however was the Shinkansen, or "shink" as Isaac likes to call it. You may have heard it called the
Bullet train. IT. WAS. AWESOME. Seriously. It took 4-4.5 hours to travel down to Fukuoka from our home in Yanai on the regular train. It took 45 mins to get home from Fukuoka on the Shink....You be the judge. Needless to say we were a little jet lagged when we got off the shink. We were completely befuddled for having made it home so quickly. We knew the shink was fast but holy crap! we had no idea. So that was definitely amazing. Ashley Caveda, if you're reading this: it's the closest thing to teleportation I have seen so far. Just FYI.

 

After this we attended another festival with a new friend also in our program named Tiffany. We went to her island Oshima that later hosted an English Summer camp and saw even bigger fireworks and a local Buddhist ritual and of course more festival food yummies! It was a lot fo fun!

 

Next I spent some sad days alone in the apartment while Isaac went off to English camp. The funny story from this pathetic 3 days of my life here was when I got Internet. You see getting things in Japan, or doing anything has at least 10 rules that come with it or 10 tasks or challenges if you will. So naturally internet was a 15 pages of insturctions rule jumping phenonmenon. Major things I needed to do : be at home when they deliver the modem because if I am not home then they will leave me a "message of no delivery" all in japanese and I will have to find a japanese-english speaker to help me call the company delivering my modem to set up a time for them to deliver the modem. If I do not know anyone- at the time I did not- then I should contact the english help line but it would take days to set up. There it was the internet at my finger tips and I had stepped out for a couple hours and came home to find the dreaded "message of no delivery" paper in out mailbox.

 

I was destated, and it was only enhanced by the rapidly blinking light on our home phone that indicated we have 3 messages, and becuase our phone is in japanese I could not figure out how to hear the messages......I tried though, for an hour to no avail.

The next day I was a little more than depressed realizing there was no way for me to spend my time here without some connection to the outside of Japan, or my apartment for that matter. I finally decided after gazing at the slip of paper that I would just call the phone number that was listed on the paper amongst all the japanese script,

A woman answered, "blah blah blah, Japanese words I don't understand....."

Me: "Uh....English?"

She: "Uh....no no. No I can help you. No English."

Well, she wasnt getting away that easily.

me: "Message of no delivery."

She: "Ah yes. Message of No delivery..... uh.....number?"

Well what do ya know, she could understand me....and she said she didn't know english! too modest.

Me: a bunch of numbers

She: "Time to deliver?"

Me: "Anytime! All Times! All Day!"

She: "Okay okay. hai. arigato gozimas."

Me: "Arigato arigato arigato arigato!" (thank you thank you thank you)

 

2 hours later I had internet!! It was a great day and very exciting if I do say so. So obviously internet has become our lifeline to the world and we are loving every minute of it. I am happily technology's slave.

 

After that I was invited to the next English camp at Oshima and treated just like Isaac and the rest of the native english speaking teachers. It was awesome and a ton of fun. We were put into groups to come up with skits......please do ask Isaac about his sometime.I will tell you what I saw:

 

It involves one japanese middle school boy with very limited english as aladdain. 1 canadian as the narrator. 1 Hawaiian as a race car and giant cemntipede bug called the mukade. 1 japanese 45 year old  man who announced to the men of the native english speakers that he was an alocoholic and proceeded to get sick form drinking too much at a the teacher's party on the first night there- this gentleman was the "genie of the lamp" and wore what I think were bunny ears and whenever he appeard made a "wooo wooo wooping" sound.....Isaac said the japanese gentleman came up with this all on his own. And lastly Isaac dressed in a hawaiian skirt wearing a wig as princess jasmine.

 

I think the story line was something like Jasmine (isaac) and Aladdain (middle school english boy) were in Indianapolis at a Indy 500 race and Aladdain got board, although Jasmine seemed to be really enjoying herself eating what looked like corn....Then Aladdain says he is going for a drink at the concessions but never returned. he found a lamp, and out wooping pops a rather peculiar and hung over genie who gave Aladdain 3 wishes. Aladdain wishes to go to Canada, but Jasmine followed and found him. So then Aladdain wishes to go to Hawaii, but Jasmine followed and found him. Finally Aladdin wishes to go to japan. And when Jasmine followed she was chased away by a giant Mucade bug...leaving Aladdin in peace. 

 

With that, I will leave you with your thoughts..... :o)

 

Please do look at the pctures if you have a chance. Maybe you will get to see Isaac as the lovely princess Jasmine. And besides that we have a new video of our various adventures here in Yanai. 

 

P.S. if you feel like sending us food packages we are craving and unable to find the following:

Dark Chocolate

PEANUT BUTTER

Cheddar Goldfish

Wheat Thins

REAL HONEY

Orbit Gum

 

We Love you guys! Until next time!

 

xoxo Hugs,

Erin 
--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/
http://picasaweb.google.com/EEHoug

August

Erin arrived in Japan on a Saturday evening, 6pm. We took a coach bus from the Hiroshima airport into the city where we could catch a late train for the two or so hour ride back to Yanai station. Erin had been travelling for nearly 24 hours by then, and I had walked all over Hiroshima that afternoon, so we were both plenty tired. We left the platform at Yanai just as it started raining a fairly dismal mountainy mist. Here, though, we`re not in the mountains, so it`s not that refreshing cool of a mountain mist. It`s something more like the humidity has gotten so thick in the stiff night air that it finally just chrystalizes into this gellatious myst that just sits there in the air and oozes overy your body as you push your way through it. The feeling is that your mind knows it must be cool, it`s night and it`s raining, but your body is on overdrive to stay ahead of the heat that`s pressing down on you. It can be hard to handle.

 

But, combined, the two of us had eight days of experience of living in Japan, which, as a foreigner, is the equivalent of being about two and a half years old. And two and half year olds can`t call for a cab. It`s a fifteen minute walk from the station to our second floor apartment, in Sunheights, but I`d never done it in conditions quite like these. We start out and knew almost immediately that this isn`t going to work. Erin had everything she was going to live with for the next year(s) there with her in her baggage, and as it was getting wet we realized we were in for a long haul.

 

Miraculously, a lone taxi appeared on the side of the street we had turned down and we began waving our arms frantically. As it often is when you find you need it most, fate was on our side as the cab slowed to a crawl and whipped a u-turn to come to a stop at the karaoke bar now accross the street from us. We clambered over our wet, sweaty, tired selves and our baggage to cross the street and get to the cab. Just as I got to the door, a smartly dressed woman, possibly in her sixties, staggered out of the backseat of the vehicle, mumbling in Japanese, paid the driver, and staggered into the karaoke bar for another round. We hopped in her place and in our best two and a half year old Japanenglish told the driver `Sunheights. Uuuuuuuhhhh, hmmmmm, sumimasen, sumimasen, ummmmmm, Sunheights?` I remembered I had brought a map with me that my predecessor had left, which had my apartment highlighted on it, so I pulled it out and we were whisked away for the short drive to our new home, like lost children at the mall, in the care of whatever passer-by happens to stop and ask what`s the matter.

 

There`s been a story like this everyday for us here in Japan, with nary an element missing. There`s always the oppressive heat; the somewhat desperate, impossible situation; the fortunate twist of fate; the shred of dark humor; and, so far, the unlikely satisfactory resolution, though sometimes lately we`ve even had some joyful successes (maybe these are becoming more common). I`ve been here now for 25 consecutive days, Erin for 19, which seems like it should qualify for the record for world`s longest emotional roller coaster, until you realize that some folks are going into their third year at this gig.

 

Unlikely as this may seem at this point, I`m not saying I don`t like it here. To the contrary, I`m in love with this adventure. To some degree, we knew what we were getting into when we signed up for this gig. That is, we knew we were getting into something that we knew absolutely nothing about. Still, you expect a roller coaster ride when you make that decision, and that`s exactly what we`re getting.

 

I guess the point that I want to make right now is that this country, these people, this geography, these streets, the menus, the currency, the service, the norms, the taboos, the culture, the physics of this place are more different on the whole than anything I could have possibly ever imagined before I stepped off that plane in Narita International Airport and had my first thick, steamy breath of (this was `air-conditioned`) Japanese air. And they're different in a way that is even different than anything I've ever experienced. Even the things that are the same are still different, sometimes mind-meltingly different. I don`t know if there`s anything you can do to prepare for that. Sure, I read some books (three or four, I think) about ``The Japanese,`` so I had an idea of when to bow for what, how the alphabet was contstructed, who was in charge, how I should act when and how not to stand out like an American. But no book or lesson or dialogue could ever prepare a person for how utterly foreign you feel from the moment you take that first breath of Japanese air. It`s like the entire country is in on some secret that I`ll never be able to understand.

 

You can find all kinds of writing about this in literature about Japan. People say it has to do with the island`s historical isolation, it`s geography has basically encouraged it`s growth into the antithesis of a melting-pot, so that there`s this entrenched, unbending concept of us vs. them, insider and outsider, moreso than is natural in every culture. That sounds weird to me, but it`s the best way I can make sense of it right now. Also, that is the very reason for the JET program at all. Someone in a position of power realized that the lack of inter-cultural understanding in Japan posed a lot of problems in the face of rapid globalization, and the JET program was one method developed to encourage internationalization. I can only imagine what it must have been like for those first ALTs, back in the 80s, placed in towns and schools where no one, literally no one they came in contact with, had ever had any exposure to people of a different race, culture, or even background. This is a cakewalk compared to that, and it`s still really hard.

 

I also want to make note of this experience that I`ve been having of feeling somewhat guilty for being here at all. Like I said, I feel like about a two and half year old here, with no parents and no one who`s responsible for me, so completley cut off from the ``grown up world`` of insiders. So I`m constantly imposing on random strangers for favors, and I have no idea what it means when I do that, or how to appropriately thank them, or even if they mind or not. I`m just so very cut off from the entire country`s shared reality. It is really, really isolating. And it`s something you can`t prepare for until you`re here, and by then it`s too late. The thing that I feel bad about is the fact that I saw that problem coming before I came here, but I didn`t worry about it very much, telling myself that things would just take care of themselves. I feel like this is a very western, probably very American attitude. That I`m somehow entitled to impose on other cultures and have them take care of me, no matter how ill-prepared I am to engage in meaningul dialogue with them.

 

In reality, this is probably where a lot the isolation that Erin and I feel is coming from. We came here with an attitude that we could "get by" because of our "industrious," much like we did for a time in Turkey. Indeed, we'll get by, and we'll thrive here, but it's painfully more evident here that when you're getting by it's not because of your industriousness. It's because someone is going out of their way to help you out. And in a country that values things operating according to "the norm" so highly, this can be a really stressful thing to do. In Turkey asking for help was a great way to get involved in the culture, here asking for help is more often than not accompanied with a feeling of being cut-off from the culture.

 

At the same time, people are just people, no matter where you go. Sometimes I can remember that, and the diffferences don't seem that intense. The differences then seem interesting and exciting. Hopefully this blog will be able to document the story of how we came to get more and more comfortable with these differences that seem so confounding right now.

 

All that being said, we are getting our footing here. The countryside is stunningly beautiful, and we`re short train rides away from a multitude of nice beaches. We can go to the grocery store now, and we know what are good prices and what are not so good prices.

 

PLUS, great news, we`ve finally got our apartment arranged so that it actually feels like a home, instead of a place that we`re staying in, where the person who did my job before me used to stay. I`ve learned that, for me, a comfortable, well thought out home is FIRST for feeling comfortable in general. It feels like we'll get more comfortable living in Yanai, Yamaguchi, Japan as a result of having a comfortable home to come back to. We`ll get up pictures of it online soon. The problem with the apartment was these tatami rooms. Our place is actually really big by Japanese standards, two tatami rooms, another room, a kitchen, dining room, a bathroom with a separate shower room, and an entry room. But we didn`t know what the rooms were for. We`d never decorated a tatami room, so we didn`t know how they were supposed to be used. Tatami is realatively fragile so you`re not really supposed to just pile furniture on it. When we got here it was used as a closet, and there was a western bed in the non-tatami room that is attached to the kitchen. We put the desk in it and tried to use it as an office, but that didn`t work. Turns out, tatami rooms are used for sleeping in on futon mats! So we got rid of our western bed and I`ll let the pictures explain the rest. Bottom line, we both really like it and just spent last night feeling quite relieved and comfortable about our new place. That was honestly the first time I`d felt completely comfortable since I got here.

 

That`s all from my end. It intense but it`s nothing to worry about. We`re as safe as we`ve ever been in our lives (small town Japan is like 1950s rural America, crime wise) and we have generally been enjoying ourselves. We`ve made a lot of trips and have a lot more in the works. We`re planning on buying some nice road bikes as soon as we can save up enough, because we have some beautiful countryside to explore and could ride to many of the beaches near us with suitable bikes. Also, Japan`s roads and drivers are all very bike friendly. Japan is definitely worth a visit and I definitely feel like what I`m doing here is worth all the effort it is taking. Plus, so far I do really enjoy my job a lot. I`ve been to two different summer camps and just enjoy teaching immensely. Plus, the teaching is about as easy as it gets for me, since I only have to fill in the blanks of other teacher`s lesson plans or come up with games, and Japanese kids seem pretty easy to keep entertained. It`s a long leap from kindergarten and public schools in the states, that`s for sure... For example, it`s been summer break since I got here and most of the teachers have come into school for eight hours every day, and most of the students still get here by 8AM to take part in club activities or various other school sponsored events, or just to hang out in the teacher`s room... It`s not like summer break in the states, that`s for sure.

 

One other thing, if you`ve possibly made it this far (sorry this is so long):

 

Here`s our address and our location on the map:

 

Sunheights 202

4711-19 

Yanai-shi, Yamaguchi-ken

742-0021

 

http://diddlefinger.com/m/yamaguchiken/yanaishi/447512/?ch=4711-19-202

 

If you feel like sending stuff, it would be awesome if I could get small, cheap 'America/Indiana/Indianapolis' memorabilia. For example, sheets of "Indy500" stickers or something along those lines. I meant to pack more stuff like that but never got around to it, and they're really useful for handing out in class and to general people I meet.

 

There`s obviously so much more to write, and so many stories to tell. Hopefully Erin will fill in a lot of them when she posts later. But those are my reflections from the first month.

 

 

 

Isaac

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/

Pics.

New pics and comments on picasa page. Check it out. New blog posts to come soon. Nearly one month in Japan!!!

The Basics

So this is it: The Beginning. Very epic.

This is the first entry in what will hopefully be a very long and enjoyable series of updates about our (Erin and Isaac's) adventures in Japan.

I want to use this entry to briefly explain the "e-logistics" of our cooperative travel-blogging adventure, which might be as confusing as it sounds. I will be sending out emails to a list of people who've expressed an interest to me in hearing about our adventure, and Erin will do the same with her updates, but to a different list of her contacts. Our mailing-lists overlap some, so some people will be receiving updates from both of us, but some from only one. If you're getting this email, you're obviously getting updates from me. However, you may not be getting emails from Erin, which would mean you're only getting part of the story!

Now, here are your options. Each of our respective emails will simultaneously post on our blog, which can be found at "loveandengrish.blogspot.com" (there's always a link on the signature line of any emails we send). So, if you're getting emails from just me, you can get the 'full story' at that web address. Also, if you'd prefer not to get inbox overflowing emails but just get updated by checking in with the blog occasionally, just let me know and I'll get your name off the list. Conversely, if your e-mail box just has way too much room in it and you want to receive the emails from both Erin and I, just email her (eehoug@gmail.com) from the address you want to receive her updates at, and she'll add you to her list.

Does that make sense?

Also, there's a place to post your comments and questions under each entry on the blog if go to that website, and those are encouraged because it would be nice to make this little venture as conversational as possible.

I'll post again soon with some info about how we got to the point we're at (catchup) and what we know about where we're headed (fortune telling).

Thanks for reading!

Until we post again,

Isaac

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/